BF Bassman vs BF Bandmaster - OTs swap

[Groover]

I have a BF Bassman and a BF Bandmaster.

There is general opinion that the Bassman is much better suited "rock" guitar than bass. I already have the amp set up for EL34s and a suggested mod is to convert the Bass channel to a Marshall type channel.

Meanwhile the Bandmaster is pretty clean and I am more likely to use it for clean guitar sounds, with pedals for overdrive/distortion, and to use it for pedal steel guitar.

This has me thinking that maybe it would be cool to put the bigger beefier OT in the Bandmaster, for enhanced low end power, and put the smaller OT in the Bassman for more saturation. This would be reversible with the possible exception of needing to drill different mounting holes.

Opinions? Should I put on my flame suit or turn on my soldering iron?

[ES350]

A lot of BF/SF Bandmasters can sound pretty wimpy, so bigger iron sounds good to me in some cases. I think Allen has some upgrade OTs for Bandmaster/Pro/Vibrolux that bolt right in, no modifications and a good price. OTOH, a Bandmaster can do a pretty good rock thing with some judicious mods but it won't run EL34. Kind of a tossup. I wouldn't say the Bandmaster or Bassman are very good steel amps, tho...

[Mike Doolin]

Coincidentally, I just did exactly that. I have a bf Bandmaster head, and I also have the OT out of a bf Bassman head, plus a couple others. I compared them all by wiring them to Molex connectors so I could swap transformers in a few seconds (see my new thread in this forum).

To my ears, the Bandmaster sounded a little nasal and compressed, but not bad, just extra "Fendery". The Bassman though was much fuller and clearer and more open sounding.